I once saw a video from the Waldorf schools that has stuck with me ever since. In the video, one of the teachers says “People press down an adult consciousness on children in the name of performance.” That line has stuck with me ever since – focusing on performance rather than development is creating a generation of sociopaths- all so we can brag about our kids to our “friends.”

An article in Big Think entitled “Elementary Children are not Little High School Students,” makes the case for stopping the madness:

Public schools, terrified of losing funding due to low test scores, have moved to “teaching to the test,” where the goal is passing exams, not mastery of a subject. (In Michigan last month it was announced that 100 schools were to be shut down because their students fell short on these exams.)

The article goes on to say that homework for elementary school students is harmful to students, damages family relationships (cutting in to essential family time – drug use is inversely correlated with family dinners), kids need rest after long school days and they need time to be kids. Thereʻs no evidence homework, at least in lower grades, works – countries that pour on the homework, like Iran and South Korea, donʻt score very well on international comparisons, for example, compared to Finland, which assigns little to no homework even in the older grades.